


Promised Land

by Tassos



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen, Spoilers - PKW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-11
Updated: 2007-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chiana makes it to the promised land.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promised Land

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for The Peacekeeper Wars.  
> Title from _This American Life_ title list.

Chiana let her fingers trail over the gilded walls. The palace grounds were quiet save for the cascading waterfalls of a dozen pools linked together by thin threads of clear water. Reeds and islands and stepping stones filled the interstitial spaces, winding a path from the bridge to the Dominar's private gazebo. His inner sanctum where nothing and no one, not even an invasion, were ever to disturb him. Ryg had told her to come by any time.

Hyneria wasn't what Chiana had expected. Water was everywhere. The palace was a raised island in the middle of a city built on stone pilings. Instead of streets there were waterways filled with hover craft flitting from place to place. The homeless and the young swam about, splashing the rare offworlder who ventured out of their quarter built of imitation land. The sea was actually in the middle of a continent, one of dozens of shallow and densely populated water masses, but you wouldn't know it to look out across the horizon. Somewhere out beyond, D'argo would have built his farm.

Chiana closed her eyes briefly and shook them open a moment later to see where to put her feet. The first stone step was meant for tiny royal feet back before there were thronesleds. It was smooth with time and solid under Chiana's first baby step.

She closed her eyes again. She didn't know why she was out here. Ever since she'd shown up with Rygel, she'd kept to the rooms he'd given her, feeling their emptiness that somehow wasn't as bad as the emptiness on Moya.

She'd tried explaining it to Crichton before she left, but it had come out in a wail of agony that left her room shattered and wishing the arms holding her up were someone else's. Aeryn had come by later, Chiana didn't know how much time had passed, but she came and handed the baby to Crichton and the bottle of raslak to Chiana. The two of them remained on the floor after Crichton was gone, its coolness soothing against her tears.

She'd asked Aeryn, somewhere between drunk and passed out, how she'd coped when she lost the other Crichton. Aeryn was silent for a long moment, as still and as patient as a wall, but one with ears and compassion that knew better than to try and reach out.

"I saw ghosts," she finally said. "Ghosts of him everywhere."

The breeze fluttered against her cheek and Chiana took the next step blind, tentatively reaching and testing the stone before shifting her weight. The darkness was not half has scary as it once was, a welcome oblivion rather than a treacherous one. Two more steps, short and straight ahead, and she reached the first small island. She felt it sag under her weight, startling her eyes open to find moss beneath her feet.

Looking around herself now, here in the Royal Hynerian Garden, Chiana didn't see the ghosts, but she felt him, carried him, always and forever. D'argo would have loved this place. Plants but no pollen, blue sky, life everywhere you looked. He would have laughed at the little birds over there in a mating dance and returned Chiana's sly glance with a delighted catch of his breath.

Chiana's breath caught now, but with a sob that lodged in her throat. D'argo was supposed to be here now, with her. Taking her away to the new farm, a new life, safe from the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens and the rest of the universe. A place they could rest for a little while.

The next set of stepping stones were larger than the first, inviting her to continue along their winding path. The water flowed around the little island she stood on, slowly but never still. Chiana moved on, a hop and stutter to the next island and the next, a half formed thought that if she stopped she would fall and drown. She had tried to stand still on Moya after, but the squalling narl and Rygel's more frequent communications and his never ending plans for his glorious return only seemed to make everything move faster.

D'argo was gone but she was still there. D'argo wouldn't see this watery planet but she had come to see if it was all he'd hoped for. It was, but it wasn't what she'd hoped for.

Chiana didn't know what she had expected really – the next planet or the next adventure. Whatever it was it hadn't been this garden of water or the bustle of an empire that carried her forward despite her desire for nothing more than to be still for perhaps the first time in her life. Chiana had been running since before she could remember, away from control, away from the law, away from D'argo for a while, but never knowing what she was running toward until D'argo offered to share his dream with her.

The gazebo was empty when Chiana crossed the last brook. She circled through it once and then settled on the far railing. The view stretched across the city that covered the sea until it met the smear of land on the horizon. Above, the sky was the color of blood. D'argo's hope had brought her here to this promised land of water and stepping stones, but the current whispered in her ear of farther to go. Chiana would find no rest here. She would leave and keep looking, taking her ghosts with her, always and forever.


End file.
